Spirit Lost (9 page)

The light from the stairwell was not sufficient to illuminate her clearly, but still he could see without any doubt that she was there.

John saw quite distinctly a young woman with a pale face leaning down over the skylight, her dark cloak billowing heavily against her, her long black hair streaming upward, backward, all around her face in the wind. Her dark eyes were large and beseeching. Her small white hands were making the sounds he had heard: She was beating her palms against the glass. There was no color to her: Her skin was all white, her eyes and hair and cloak all deep black.

“Jesus Christ,” John whispered. He clutched the wooden step in front of him. He was dizzy with shock. He had not felt such a deep plunge of fear and dread since he was a child. But he could not seem to look away, and the woman did not disappear. She continued to beat with her small hands on the skylight glass.

“Who are you?” John whispered. But he spoke more to himself than to the woman at the skylight. In any case, she did not seem to hear him. I’m going mad, John thought. I’m going fucking mad. I think there’s a woman blowing around on the roof.

“Willy!” John yelled.

“No!” the ghost-woman called, and raised a hand, palm out to him, as if to forestall him.

He heard her voice then quite clearly. It was high, light, sweet, enchanting even in its demand. He heard it as clearly as he had ever heard anything.

John stared hard at the woman. She seemed to be kneeling on the roof, bending over the skylight—that much was realistic about her; a real woman could find purchase on the roof like that. And he could see her so clearly: her long hair blowing in the wind, the heavy cape buffeting against her, the contrast between her pale skin and dark eyes. She did not look like a ghost or skeleton or spirit; she looked like a real woman.

A very beautiful woman.

“Who are you?” John asked again, louder now. He had to speak through teeth he had clenched against the shaking that had overtaken his body. “What are you doing out there? How can you be out there?”

She answered: “Let me in.”

“I can’t,” he said. “The skylight doesn’t open. Come to a door.”

But she was gone.

In an instant she had vanished. Not moved away, not walked, or flew or fell away; she had simply, completely, disappeared. Like a flame going out on a match. He was left lying against the stairs, his hands growing cold from the chill of the glass.

John knew that either he was going mad or he had seen a ghost. He did not believe in ghosts. But he desperately wanted not to be mad. He rested his head against the step.

After a while an ache ran down his arms into his shoulders. He backed down the steps from the skylight, looking around him as he did. Now the windows were clattering, but only from the wind. Nothing in the attic moved. John went down the stairs to the
second floor, switched off the light, and shut the door. He leaned against it and looked around.

Here was the hall leading to the big bedroom at the back of the house that he and Willy shared, to the middle bedroom, now Willy’s sewing room, to the guest bedroom at the front of the house and the stairs to the first floor. Here was the reality of worn carpet, light switches, unpacked cartons, familiar furniture. John was still trembling all over. He needed to talk with Willy. He went down the stairs rapidly.

Willy had fallen asleep on the living room sofa with the television turned down low. A football game was ending, and the time was clicking off with digital speed in the right-hand corner of the screen. Willy lay sprawled on the sofa, covered with a multicolored afghan. She was so colorful, even in her sleep, so sane and vivid and
sensible
. Her braided hair, her clean-scrubbed face, her healthy deep breathing, all signs of a peaceful inner life.

John knelt beside his wife. “Willy,” he said. “Wake up. Willy, I need you.”

Willy woke up almost instantly in that way she had, so that it seemed she had no dream life to push through in order to get back to reality. She sat up and leaned against the sofa arm. “John, what’s wrong?”

John took both Willy’s hands in his. “Willy, I saw a ghost. Don’t laugh,” he demanded, because immediately she began to smile. “I’m not kidding. I wish I were kidding. I saw a fucking goddamned ghost.”

“Where?” Willy asked. “What was it like?” She pulled her knees up so that John could sit next to her on the sofa.

“I had just finished working. I heard noises—a window being tapped on, but louder than tapping. I climbed the steps to the skylight, and there she was.”

“A woman?” Willy asked.

“A young woman,” John said. “Wearing a heavy black cloak. She had long black hair. She was trying to get in. She wanted to get in. She asked me to let her in.”

“She
spoke
to you?”

“Yes,” John said. “Oh, Christ, Willy!” he exclaimed then, and pushed himself up off the sofa. He began to pace the room, his body restless now with the remains of his fear. “I know this sounds crazy. I know it sounds unbelievable. But it happened. I swear it. In fact, it happened last week, too. I had just finished working, and I looked out the harborside window, and I saw a woman there, her back to me. She was the same woman,
I’m sure of it, though I didn’t see her face. She had lots of black hair and that heavy cape.”

“She was just sort of
floating
in the air outside the window?” Willy asked.

“Willy, this is not a joke!” John shouted.

Willy rose and went to her husband. She put her hands on his chest. “I’m not saying it’s a joke. I’m not acting like this is a joke,” she said. “I was just asking a question.”

John looked down. “No, she didn’t
float
. She was just there. Standing there.
I
know there’s nothing out there for her to stand on. Christ. That’s why I didn’t tell you last week. I thought I was hallucinating. I thought I’d been working too hard. Too fast. But tonight—Willy, she was there. I saw her. I heard her speak.”

“Well, I think this is exciting!” Willy said. “Let’s go back up. Let’s go see if we can see her.”

“Let me fix myself a scotch first,” John said.

They went together then, John with a giant straight scotch in his hand, back up to the attic. They pulled on the light chain above the attic steps, but no other.

The attic was very quiet. John’s half-finished painting of feathers and shell sat against the easel. The white of empty canvases loomed out in the darkened room. Very gently the panes of the skylight and windows shook in the wind.

“She’s not going to come now,” John said, his voice low and angry.

“Shh,” Willy said. “Don’t be impatient. Let’s wait.”

They waited. Willy climbed the skylight steps and looked up, but saw nothing. She waited there a long while and still saw nothing. John sat on his high stool, looking out the window, but he saw only the harbor, dark except for the passing flicker of a ship’s lights, and the sky, dark except for the random twinkling lights of a plane flying from Nantucket to Hyannis.

They waited perhaps an hour. They heard the wind rattling the windows and the sound of each other’s breathing. Nothing else.

Finally they agreed to go back downstairs. John fixed himself another scotch; Willy fixed dinner. John sat at the dining room table, letting his food grow cold, telling Willy over and over again every detail he could remember about the ghost.

When he was sipping his third scotch, Willy said, “The painting in the attic, John—the one of the shell and the berry and the feathers. That’s what you’re working on
now, isn’t it? It’s very good, I think. And not like your usual work.”

John smiled. “You like it? Good. It’s painstaking work. I want to get the color and detail just right. I’m going to work on it tomorrow.” He paused, then grimaced. “Ghost or no ghost, Willy, I’m going back to the attic to work on it tomorrow.”

Chapter Four

The next morning, John awoke feeling hung over, exhausted, and embarrassed. A
ghost
. He cringed at the remembrance of the evening before. He showered and shaved and shook his head at himself in the mirror. “You lunatic,” he said.

For his reasoning had returned. He knew there were no such things as ghosts and realized now in the bright light of day that what had happened last night had been only an illusion brought on by his nerves and whatever light and shadows the tossing trees had thrown against the skylight. Part of it came from stress, probably. He had not told even Willy how much he wanted to do something important with his art and how afraid he was that he didn’t have sufficient talent. He had read enough psychology to know about the twists and tricks anxiety could play on a person’s mind. He vowed to be more sensible, less panicked about his work. He was only beginning. He had five years.

Willy sewed curtains for her sewing room windows. She had found a heavy chintz fabric, cream, covered with birds, flowers, and fruits in colors of peach and rose and turquoise blue. She put down one of their smaller Oriental rugs in the room, the slate blue with an ivory border, and by the end of the week her room was finished. She set out her favorite items on the built-in bookshelf: favorite books between porcelain bookends, photos of herself and John in malachite or silver frames, shells and rocks she had collected from the beach. Her stereo and records were in one corner, next to the small padded lady’s chair she sometimes sat in to relieve her aching back when she embroidered for long hours. She had a mahogany cabinet filled with threads, fabrics, and needles and a long mahogany table covered with the different frames she used. She was ready to work on a new piece but hadn’t decided what she wanted to do yet.

Feeling slightly guilty about devoting so much time to her own private room, she resolved to spend the next few weeks just on the house—and on Christmas. She loved Christmas. She brought boxes out of the storage room at the back of the house and took out the decorations they had used for eight years. She went into the village and bought a wreath, which she decorated herself with an enormous plaid bow and pinecones and red berries she found on the moors. She wove fresh greens into the frame that held four Advent candles and bought new purple Advent tapers at Robinson’s Five and Ten. She
arranged these along the mantel in the dining room and felt melancholy; this was their first Christmas away from Boston, and they would be lonely here, knowing no one.

Sunday morning she rose, dressed, and went off to church by herself, partly because she loved church, especially at Christmas, but partly from a need just to
see
other people. It was interesting to her that John, who ordinarily lived among crowds of friends and colleagues, was showing no signs of missing others around him and in fact seemed quite content with his new solitude. He was still sleeping when she returned at noon, and so she spent the next hour setting up the crèche on one of the living room end tables. She had made the crèche when she was thirteen and had sculpted the small pieces from clay and painted them herself, in brilliant colors. Her art teacher, who had doted on her, fired the pieces for her, and her parents had set these awkward, homely pieces in a place of honor on the marble mantel in their elegant living room. Now Willy set them up every Christmas and smiled to see her long-nosed Virgin Mary, her spindly Joseph, her lopsided and bucktoothed wise men.

Later, she and John read the Sunday papers, then took a long walk on the beach, wrapped up in wool scarves, hats, coats, and gloves. It was cold and windy; winter was coming on. They ate thick, juicy cheeseburgers at the Brotherhood and watched
Masterpiece Theatre
. Willy went to bed then with a book, because John, who hadn’t worked all day, decided to go up to the attic to look over the painting he had just finished. He stayed there for an hour or so. When he returned, he was in a good humor, pleased with what he had accomplished that week, and he went downstairs to get them each a Courvoisier. They sat in bed like buddies, sipping their brandy and talking. There was no more mention of ghosts. A week had passed without any sign of the ghost, and while they had not forgotten the incident, it had faded in importance; soon it would be just a good story to tell.

Another week passed, ghost-free.

On Saturday morning, Willy nuzzled next to John as they lay stretching in their warm bed.

“Guess what,” she said. “You’re taking the day off. Don’t argue. I haven’t seen
you all week, and I won’t let you work today. This is worse than when you worked for the Blackstone Group. I want to go Christmas shopping today. I want to walk around town with you and look at the lights and the shops. Come on, sweetie, be a sport,” she teased, running her hands over his body, touching him in persuasive places.

John thought about it. He had finished the last feather-and-shell painting yesterday; he was at a good stopping place. “Okay,” he said. “I’m all yours today.”

While he was shaving, he called Willy into the bathroom. “Look,” he said, pointing to his mustache. He hadn’t clipped it for a long time, and it was growing longer than he’d ever let it get before. “What would you think if I let it grow like this?” he asked, indicating with his hands how the mustache would droop down around the ends of his mouth.